Giant Bomb News

Mass Effect 3 Coming in March 2012, Battlefield 3 Drops This October

Two of EA's biggest games now have release dates.

Not gonna beat around the bush or write any overly lengthy intros for this one. Just the facts.

Battlefield 3, one of the two military shooters you are most likely to be chomping at the bit for this year, now has a release date: October 25th, 2011. That's two weeks prior to Modern Warfare 3, just in case you were keeping score at home.

Not gonna beat around the bush or write any overly lengthy intros for this one. Just the facts.

Battlefield 3, one of the two military shooters you are most likely to be chomping at the bit for this year, now has a release date: October 25th, 2011. That's two weeks prior to Modern Warfare 3, just in case you were keeping score at home.

not to bring up a flame war but I think this is really good news considering this will be out before the next annual edition of call of duty. giving the hard-core fps gamers a chance to play something that doesn't have call of duty in its title.

just hope they don't implement a stupid online code system which in my opinion turned people away from medal of honor and other online pass enabled games.

@AlwaysBeClothing: *shudder* Tell me about it :-( Hopefully with E3 immenently in the bag, it won't take too long for more gameplay focused material to come out (for instance, I liked the class-centric gameplay vids that were done pre-ME2).

@swoxx: Because how long has it been since a true Battlefield game? Battlefield 2 came out in 2005, and it was a pretty massive game. DICE may be a big studio, but they've been working on so many projects over the years. How much of that was really spent on developing this new Battlefield? I just feel like they have been spreading themselves kinda all over the place, and regardless of how long they may have worked on this game, I still think it feels rushed. DICE worked on 2 games that were released last year alone: Bad Company 2, and Medal of Honor. It's only been a year since the last one, and you can't dish out a game with the quality one would hope for in that short a period.

Even if they have been working on BF3 for maybe 2 years, they were still probably not in full production the whole time. You can't make a game of the same quality as the previous Battlefield in that kind of time table, especially when they're not just coming up with new game-play mechanics, but a whole new engine which is supposed to be really visually impressive.

It's no secret that EA doesn't have issue with rushing a developer to finish a product by a certain date (Dragon Age 2 anyone?). The October release date gives EA exactly what they want, a heads up on MW3.

Also DICE worked on the multi-player for Medal of Honor last year, and we saw how well that game turned out, (pretty lacking I thought). They're not an infallible developer. They worked on the BF bad company games before which are not bad games, but no where near the scale of what Battlefield 3 is trying to live up.

@swoxx: Because how long has it been since a true Battlefield game? Battlefield 2 came out in 2005, and it was a pretty massive game. DICE may be a big studio, but they've been working on so many projects over the years. How much of that was really spent on developing this new Battlefield? I just feel like they have been spreading themselves kinda all over the place, and regardless of how long they may have worked on this game, I still think it feels rushed. DICE worked on 2 games that were released last year alone: Bad Company 2, and Medal of Honor. It's only been a year since the last one, and you can't dish out a game with the quality one would hope for in that short a period. Even if they have been working on BF3 for maybe 2 years, they were still probably not in full production the whole time. You can't make a game of the same quality as the previous Battlefield in that kind of time table, especially when they're not just coming up with new game-play mechanics, but a whole new engine which is supposed to be really visually impressive. It's no secret that EA doesn't have issue with rushing a developer to finish a product by a certain date (Dragon Age 2 anyone?). The October release date gives EA exactly what they want, a heads up on MW3. Also DICE worked on the multi-player for Medal of Honor last year, and we saw how well that game turned out, (pretty lacking I thought). They're not an infallible developer. They worked on the BF bad company games before which are not bad games, but no where near the scale of what Battlefield 3 is trying to live up.

While I agree with you on the EA rushing things part, I don't really think you can count MoH as a DICE project, I know they made the MP but they would not have the same vested interest in that as their own game. I guess we'll see how it turns out but I'm hoping EA is smart enough not to ruin a valuable franchise. Also the live demo given on the EA PC looked pretty damn good.

I wonder if Battlefield will keep the online pass going, considering COD is advertising heavily as having free multiplayer. I realize EA wants to stop used sales and make as much bank as possible, but it'd be a smart move to not include it for Battlefield to fight the Activision marketing.